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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Sometimes I trip over my fighting spirit

To get anywhere in this world I believe you have to be a fighter, not the bullying, violent type of fighter but someone with a fighting spirit. The true fighters are the ones who fight for something worth fighting for.

Fighters stand up for other people, for things they believe in, and when necessary – for themselves. I have always believed in the fighting spirit, sometimes to my detriment because it's gotten me into a number of sticky situations.

I'm not a confrontational sort of person but I've also never been the sort of person who can sit back when someone is being taken advantage of, being bullied or is simply unable to stand up for themselves. Case in point, many years ago a fellow co-worker was being bullied by a recently terminated employee who had come back on to work premises to verbally abuse and intimidate my co-worker. My co-worker was two foot nothing and was up against the bully who was tall for a girl. Co-worker was also of Indonesian background and sometimes struggled with the English language.

When I saw her being bullied I saw red. Firstly because my co-worker was so sweet natured that she was unable to stand up to the bully and secondly because the bully was not telling the truth and was trying to do a snow job on my poor innocent co-worker. Did I step in, most definitely. Was it any of my business, probably not. Did that stop me, not at all.

I pointed out to the bully that she was lying to my co-worker and then stepped between her and co-worker to stop the intimidation. I then made sure she was removed from the business premises as she had no business being there in the first place. What ensued for me was almost a month of abusive phone calls at all hours of the night from the bully who was upset that I had intervened. My thought - it was probably better that it was me receiving the calls than my quiet and unassuming co-worker.

I was eventually forced to make a report to police after advice from my boss. This had little effect despite warnings from the police (who strangely enough knew of her) the bully didn't care and continued her torment. It was such a minor thing that I had stepped into which had blown completely out of control.

Hubby and boss eventually took it into their own hands and took turns parking across her driveway at all hours of the day and night. No words spoken, no threats made - plain intimidation is sometimes all it takes to out-bully a bully.

So while everyone advises that you should never get involved in something that's not your business, sometimes you have to do what you think is right. In my world it's never okay to standby and watch someone being bullied, downtrodden or abused.

What are your thoughts, do you turn a blind eye or do you get involved?

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it. ~David Star Jordan